Conversion Capital was built by Christian Lawless, a former capital-markets leader at Lehman Brothers and Barclays, around the idea that financial services infrastructure would move to the cloud and get unbundled, with a focus on mortgage-related companies like Blend, Qualia, Figure, Polly, Vesta, Haven, and Pylon, and a preference for backing outsider engineering teams rather than industry insiders. The firm avoids companies that take on balance sheet risk, invests mainly in the U.S. and London rather than markets like LatAm or most of Europe, and says it intentionally held back capital during the 2021 bull market so it could deploy during the following downturn.